


all our hands in holders

by mikkary



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Holidays, Winter Solstice, agrarian and chthonic mysteries, caduceus pov is a blessing to write and i hope i did it justice, the clerics have a couple heart to hearts, vaguely canon but no major spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 09:13:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17180150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkary/pseuds/mikkary
Summary: Jester teaches Caduceus about Winter's Crest. Caduceus tells Jester about his Winter's Solstice vigils. 'Tis the season for secrets, darkness, buried things, and joy.





	all our hands in holders

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AbbyWell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbbyWell/gifts).



> _Let the yoke fall from our shoulders,_   
>  _Don't carry it all don't carry it all,_   
>  _We are all our hands in holders,_   
>  _Beneath this bold and brilliant sun._

“Caduceus,” Jester says one day when it’s just the two of them sitting in the cart. She’s been sewing up a rip in her skirt (“Technically I _could_ use Mending, but this way I can make it pretty!”), but it looks like she’s finished. She’s closed the rip with green thread, making the stem of an embroidered pink flower. It joins the other flowers on her skirt and Caduceus realizes for the first time that maybe _those_ were rips too. That’s fascinating. That’s really great.

He realizes that he’s been thinking about embroidery and ignoring Jester. “Sorry, what did you say?”

By now she’s used to Caduceus spending most of his time off in his own world, so Jester is patient when she repeats, “I said, what did you do for Winter’s Crest when you were living in the graveyard? Did your family celebrate?”

Winter’s Crest. The name rings a bell. A very, very faint bell. “What’s Winter’s Crest?” Caduceus says, and knows immediately that it’s the wrong response because Jester’s eyes get huge and she gasps.

“Caduceus! You’ve never heard of _Winter’s Crest_? But it’s like, totally the best holiday ever _in the world_!”

“Yeah?” Caduceus asks, raising his eyebrows. He’s interested.

“It’s like,” Jester begins and then does that thing where she scrunches up her whole face as she tries to think of the right way to describe or explain something. Nott has started doing it too sometimes. Caduceus thinks that’s pretty cute. “Basically, it’s a really fun festival in the middle of winter, and there’s a party in the town square and contests and everything, and I never got to go but I always saw it from my window! And I’m excited about having Winter’s Crest with everybody this year! We are going to have so much fun.”

Caduceus nods. A festival sounds… a little overwhelming. “Huh,” he says. “When is it?”

“Um, I’m pretty sure…” Jester says and starts counting on her fingers. “In three days, maybe?”

“Oh,” Caduceus says, because he’s also counting down the days, but for another reason. “That’s the winter solstice, isn’t it?”

Jester nods.

Caduceus mirrors her without really thinking about it, nodding his large head as well. “Yeah. I celebrate that.” He pauses just slightly because ‘celebrate’ doesn’t seem like the right term exactly. “I don’t think I celebrate it like Winter’s Crest, though.”

Now Jester leans forward with bright-eyed, sparkling interest, and Caduceus knows it’s not faked. That’s one thing he loves about her: her genuine, open-hearted joy and wonder at the world. He always appreciates seeing in other people the qualities he tries to cultivate in himself.

On the other hand, this doesn't seem exactly like a holiday that Jester would like. Caduceus explains anyway. "At the graveyard, we have a Winter Solstice vigil.” He looks out past Jester, over the rolling hills and craggy rock outcroppings that mark the bland landscape, which cast long, distorted shadows in the setting sun. But he's not really looking at the plains. He's thinking back to the shaded graveyard of his childhood, his adolescence, his adulthood... his entire life apart from the past few months. "The solstice... is the time of the year when the veil between worlds is the thinnest," he says and almost hears his father's voice speaking through him. "All kinds of nasty things can happen in a graveyard then. So we would light a fire, keep it burning all night, and stay up to watch, just in case."

Jester doesn't like ghosts. It's understandable. Caduceus has never met a ghost he likes. And she frowns to hear about the way he usually spends Winter's Crest. "You had to stay up all night and look out for ghosts even when you were a little kid? Even when you were by yourself?"

Caduceus nods. "It wasn't bad," he says, refocusing on the conversation in front of him rather than his memories of dark solstice nights, the strange chill in the graveyard, the first encounter he'd had with a wandering spirit, when its hand brushed across the back of his neck when he only five years old. He'd screamed, and his older sister had grabbed him and covered his mouth. "We had to be quiet, though. We would whisper a lot. Tell secrets that we'd kept through the year..."

"Secrets?" Jester asks, her eyes wide.

"It's a day of secrets," Caduceus says in a matter-of-fact tone. "Secrets and buried things."

He can tell that Jester is thinking because of the slight frown she's wearing on her face, like she's forgotten momentarily to maintain her smile, her pleasant expression. Caduceus thinks that she's more honest in these small moments of forgetting than she is at most other times he sees her, and right now, he waits patiently for her question. She opens her mouth—

—and Beau trots up to them. "Hey, we're gonna make camp soon. Jester, Deuces, wanna help me look for a spot?"

"Yeah!" Jester says, her smile returning in full force. She shoves her sewing kit back in her bright pink haversack and straightens up, kneeling in the cart so that she can peer out into the landscape. Caduceus thinks that's the end of the conversation.

It isn't. They resume that night, when they both take the third watch shift, sitting close together in the arcane protective sphere that Caleb constructed around their campsite. Jester hugs her knees to her chest and stares into the dying fire. Now, with the sun a few hours from rising, it's burnt down to embers. Caduceus watches the fire too and thinks about the way that he would huddle up with his sisters and brothers — him, the smallest of all of them — in the coldest, darkest hours of their solstice vigil. They'd get the spots closest to the fire; Caduceus's parents and older siblings would range further afield. By that time, a hush would always descend on the graveyard as even their whispered conversation died down, and all they could hear would be the susurrations of wind in the trees or the tiny paperlike noises of snow falling on the ground.

He's so immersed in his reverie that Jester's quiet murmur sounds like his sister for a moment, until it doesn't — and it hurts just a little bit. But it's an old ache, and Caduceus knows how to carry those. "Caduceus?" Jester says quietly.

Caduceus blinks his way out of his imagination and looks over at Jester, who is sitting about a foot away from him. She'd been petting her sleeping crimson weasel with one finger; now Sprinkle lies limp and quiet in her lap as she looks up at him. "Yeah?" he asks.

"What are you going to do about your graveyard for the winter solstice this year?"

It's a simple question. But Caduceus has learned that Jester's simplest questions generally mean so much more than she lets on. "I suppose it'll have to fend for itself," he offers. "It was... pretty settled, when I left. So hopefully nothing much has changed."

Jester nods. There's a pause in which Caduceus watches her frown again and resume slowly running her finger along Sprinkle's chin. The weasel makes a contented noise and its paws twitch. It's adorable. Finally, Jester speaks again. "And you always did the vigil? Even... even when there was nobody around?"

He'd only done the vigil by himself a few times. It had been eerie in a way that the solstice usually wasn't, even with the corrupted Savalierwood as a heavy presence all around them. The second time he'd stood at the bonfire all alone, Caduceus had heard voices. He still doesn't know if they were real or a trick of the night. He's not sure that the difference matters, either. "Yeah," he says. "It wasn't so bad."

Jester looks like she doesn't believe him. That's fair.

"It wasn't easy," Caduceus allows under her skeptical gaze.

That seems to mollify her. She nods and then resumes petting Sprinkle and staring into the fire. Caduceus lets the silence fall between them once more. It isn't an awkward silence, like he can have with Fjord or Beau, or a heavy silence, with Caleb. It's an easy silence, like he has sometimes with Yasha or Nott. Where they can sit in each other's presence and just... be.

Caduceus enjoys moments like that. He breathes in the bitter cold night air, feels the earth and all its living things under his fingers. Even in the middle of winter, even as the Wildmother slumbers, the world is still wonderfully alive. There are networks of roots that stretch for miles, where plants and fungi tangle together inseparably in a riot of being. There are the small creatures that burrow down under the ground and hibernate until the weather warms up. There is warmth and energy and endless abundance of life even in these plains where the dead grass stretches on to infinity.

Nothing really dies. Or rather, everything dies, but nothing is lost. It just transforms.

Winter is a season for transformation.

"Who did you tell secrets to?" Jester asks, and Caduceus brings his mind up from below the ground, up from the roots and the insects and the small burrowing creatures, away from the unending, always changing life. "When you were by yourself. The Wildmother?"

"No," Caduceus says. "Well... sort of, maybe. I mostly talked to the trees. And some of my favorite gravestones."

"Your favorite...?"

"The ones that gave the best tea," Caduceus says. He can see that Jester isn't wholly comfortable with this conversation, but she's still actively listening. It's always been odd to him, how few people he meets are comfortable with talk about death and what comes after.

"Oh," Jester says and laughs a little. "That makes sense." Caduceus knows that she means it, and that's very nice. “What… what kind of secrets did you tell?”

Caduceus thinks back. It feels very distant now. And winter solstice vigils all feel like they take place in some space slightly divorced from reality: a little to the left, a little off center. “Hmm. Probably things that I was afraid of. Those aren’t easy to admit when you’re on your own.”

He’s thinking about those secrets, whispered very quietly to sympathetic trees and silent gravestones, and therefore almost misses the way that Jester’s eyes widen and her face falls. Almost. He sees it anyway, and thinks, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

“What… what were you afraid of?” Jester asks.

 _I’m afraid that I’ll never see my family again. I’m afraid that the Savalierwood will corrupt me too. I’m afraid that I will die here alone, and no one will be left to care for the land. I’m afraid that the Wildmother will never speak to me again_.

Caduceus settles on, “A lot.”

“Are you still afraid?”

The question, in all its innocence, in all its deceptive simplicity, makes Caduceus chuckle, surprising himself. “I am absolutely terrified.”

His answer, or the question, or the situation in general, also coaxes a laugh from Jester, and her whole face scrunches up again as she ducks her head a little. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah.”

*

Jester broaches the topic of a Winter’s Crest celebration to everyone the next day at dinner. Caduceus looks around the circle of his friends and gauges their varied reactions.

Nott and Beau seem excited. Nott, because she’s never had a _real_ Winter’s Crest celebration before. Beau, probably because she’s had too many “real” Winter’s Crest celebrations over the years, and she’s excited for something different.

Fjord seems happy but cautious. He’s always trying to please, and Caduceus knows that will put him in some difficult situations. It already has. And Caduceus has seen that he’s afraid of clinging to any kind of happiness, with the fear that it will all turn to water in his hands. Caleb is the same way — but he fears that his happiness will turn to ashes, instead.

Yasha smiles. She always looks a little sad when she does so, but it’s different from Caleb’s sadness, which he carries like a weight around his neck, or like Jester’s sadness, which she buries deep down in her and ignores. Yasha’s sadness is like a second skin, long worn-in, almost comfortable. And she says, “That sounds like fun.”

“Doesn’t it?” Jester asks, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement.

Caduceus is mostly bemused, but he knows that one of the essential Winter’s Crest traditions, at least according to Beau and Jester, involves gift giving. “It doesn’t have to be anything like, _really fancy_ , you know,” Jester says. “Maybe we can do something bigger in town.”

The next town, according to the map, is still five days away. The road is very, _very_ long.

“Yeah, I bet they’ll still have all the Winter’s Crest decorations up and everything,” Beau agrees, jumping into this idea the same way she jumps into most of Jester’s plans: headfirst, and with enthusiasm.

“That would be _so_ nice,” Jester says. “But we can make our own decorations, right?” She turns her blinding smile onto Caleb. “You can make really pretty lights, right?”

Caleb is as susceptible to Jester’s charms as any of them, and maybe moreso than most. “Ja,” he says even though he looks uncomfortable about celebrating any holiday at all. He turns over his hand, palm up, and four globes of light emanate from his fingertips. Softly glowing, they float up and circle over their heads.

Jester applauds. So does Nott.

“We can cut out paper snowflakes,” Beau says, then suddenly hesitates, looking at Caleb. “If… you have scrap paper.”

Nott turns her pleading gaze onto Caleb as well. “I’ve never made paper snowflakes before…”

Caleb sighs but again, doesn’t argue with the idea. How could he, with Nott looking at him like that. “I have a few sheets, ja. They may have some writing on them already, if that is alright…”

“Of course,” Jester says. Then she turns her smile onto Fjord and Yasha, who are sharing the same flat rock as a bench. Fjord’s legs are stretched out in front of him. Yasha is sharpening her sword. “Maybe we could build like, a _really_ big fire. And roast some _really_ good food.”

Fjord and Yasha exchange a glance. They have a certain understanding that Caduceus hasn’t quite figured out yet, but it seems to rest on their shared perception that they’re the most responsible adult in the room, and their shared desire to keep the group safe. And a bonfire is basically a bandit magnet, even if the bandits celebrate something as sacred as the solstice. “I can hunt while we’re traveling tomorrow,” Yasha offers.

Jester beams. “That can be your Winter’s Crest gift! And Caleb, the paper can be your gift. And the lights!”

“Fjord and I can build the fire,” Beau volunteers. Fjord doesn’t look entirely happy with that offer, but he shrugs and nods.

Caduceus feels very out of his depth, but he speaks up anyway. “I can make drinks. I have tea.”

“I have gifts that I want to give!” Nott says, grinning. Caduceus is charmed. He wonders what it’ll turn out to be.

“That’s great, Nott!” Jester says and claps her hands together. “Then everyone is set for the best Winter’s Crest ever!” Then she pauses, her face falling slightly. “Oh— I need a gift, don’t I?”

“No, no,” Beau and Nott and Caleb and Fjord all say at once, with Yasha and Caduceus observing silently. There’s a bit of a cacophony in the campsite.

“You have given more than enough already, Jester—” That’s Caleb

And Nott, over him: “No you don’t!”

And Beau: “Come on, Jester, we can figure that out later, right?”

It’s Fjord who comes up with an actual solution. “Jes, listen, you’re the one who’s organizing this and putting it all together, right?” he says in that deep and commanding voice that makes everyone’s head swivel to pay attention to him. It’s like clockwork. “That’s _your_ gift to us.”

And then everyone’s heads turn to Jester, who’s still frowning slightly. But she quickly covers it over with a smile. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense!” she says.

Everyone nods, happy with a compromise well-crafted, but Caduceus continues looking at Jester a second longer than the rest, and sees her frown reappear when she’s no longer the center of attention.

It’s always difficult to know when something needs to be addressed and when it’s better to just leave it in silence. Even Caduceus, with his gifts for reading people and his experience talking to the bereaved in the graveyard, doesn't really consider himself an expert. It seems especially difficult with Jester. Caduceus never knows whether a gentle question in the wrong place will be too much, or what kind of support he should give her as opposed to Beau or Nott or anyone else, really.

So he stays silent and ruminates on the situation through the night and all through the next day, while Yasha — and occasionally Nott — range far away from them in the plains to hunt out what game they can. He keeps quiet as Fjord and Beau build a fire and Caleb lights it with a touch. He chooses his teas carefully and brews them quietly over a smaller, more manageable fire as Jester and Beau and Nott whirl around the bonfire, dancing and laughing. He makes a paper snowflake with the rest of them, and Yasha strings them together to make a sort of garland. Nott solemnly gives them all buttons from her collection. Apparently she chose each of them to match with the recipient. Caduceus gets a mother of pearl button that glimmers with turquoise and pink and indigo. "This is one of the nicest things anyone has ever given me," he says and means it, and Nott beams.

Later, they tamp down the bonfire, shoveling dirt over the smoldering remains. And then they move their campsite about two hundred feet or so away, just in case, and flop down by the fire, tired and smiling.

It's been a good winter solstice, Caduceus thinks. And while he doesn't want to totally forsake his family tradition, this has been a whole lot better than sitting scared in a graveyard by a fire, waiting to ward off hungry ghosts. Whatever ghosts there are here, they've stayed far away from the merriment of the Mighty Nein. And as Caduceus lies down on his bedroll, he feels a deep sense of connection between his own heartbeat and the endless, unpredictable life within the earth. The Wildmother may slumber at the moment, but she is also undeniably here.

He goes to sleep with a smile on his face, and he still feels that smile inside of him as Beau shakes him awake for third watch. Jester is sitting up too, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and she smiles at Caduceus from across the remnants of their smaller fire. He wraps a blanket around his shoulders — it's bitterly cold — and moves next to her. Maybe this is an opportunity to talk. He'll feel it out first.

"Winter's Crest was a lot of fun," he says. "I'd like to do that again sometime."

Jester smiles at him. Her face must be sore from smiling so much, but Caduceus is pretty sure it's genuine. Just like all of her smiles were during the celebration. She'd had a good time, in spite of whatever had been bothering her. "I'm glad that you had fun! I haven't had that much fun at Winter's Crest in... ages." She draws her knees up to her chest, wrapping her own blanket tighter around her shoulders, then continues as her smile grew nostalgic and a little bit sad: "My momma and I used to celebrate together. But she performs for most of the night, so I would watch her from the balcony. And then afterward, she'd be tired, but we'd bundle up together in her big bed and tell each other about all the good things in the world. And the things that we liked best about each other."

"That sounds really wonderful," Caduceus says, mimicking Jester's pose. Jester shifts so that she's leaning heavily on him. Her horn digs into Caduceus's upper arm, but it's not bad. It's kind of nice. "I really liked your mom."

"I really like her too," Jester says and there's more emotion in her tone than either of them expect. She pauses and Caduceus feels her tremble a little, and when he glances down, her eyes are closed and there's a tear on her lashes.

So maybe he doesn't have to press much. "You miss her."

Jester nods. "I really liked having Winter's Crest with everybody, but I wish we could do something like that, you know? Where we talk about things." She sniffles a little. "Or maybe like what you did with your family, where we talk about secrets or, or what we're afraid of. But I... don't think that anybody wants to do that. Because we all want to pretend that we aren't afraid."

"I'm not pretending," Caduceus says. "I told you the other night. I'm pretty terrified." He stares into the embers of their fire, which glow and change as if the fire is a living thing, and politely pretends not to notice Jester sniffle and discreetly wipe her eyes with the corner of her blanket. After a moment, he says, "Maybe we can't do that with everyone. But we could try right now, just the two of us. Maybe it would help a little bit. It couldn't hurt."

There's a moment's silence and Caduceus worries that he's overplayed his hand. But then Jester sniffles again and, in a very quiet voice, says, "I'd— like that."

Caduceus smiles. "That's great," he says. "Let's say something we're afraid of, and then something that we like about each other. Yeah? I'll start with something I'm afraid of."

Jester nods silently against his shoulder.

Caduceus thinks through his litany of fears. It's tough to pick only one. Finally, he says, "I'm afraid that I'll never see my family again. I don't know what happened to them, and I'm not sure what's worse — if I find out and it's awful, or if I never find out."

One thing Caduceus has noticed is the way that Jester listens very seriously and takes people's worries to heart. She's always been generous and as understanding as she can be; she's full of compassion. Now is no different. Caduceus feels her draw into herself a little as she feels fear for him. "I don't know what I would pick either," she admits. "Both choices are... pretty awful."

"Yeah," Caduceus says and huffs out a bit of a laugh. "Yeah, you can say that." There’s a brief pause. "It's your turn."

Jester doesn’t say anything for a few moments and Caduceus worries once again that she’ll decide not to participate in this conversation. But Jester isn’t like that; she’s generous to a fault. And she needs this. It just takes her some time, and when she does speak, it’s in a whisper. “I’m… I want everyone to keep doing good things, and I’m… I’m afraid that they won’t listen to me. And if nobody listens to me, maybe the Traveler will stop listening to me too. And I’ll be… all alone because I couldn’t take care of people.” Her voice breaks a little as she finishes the sentence, and then she sniffles and buries her face in Caduceus’s shoulder.

“That’s… a lot,” Caduceus says, and that’s all he can think of at the moment. Anyone else Jester talks to will assure her that that isn’t the case, that she’s wonderful and that everyone listens to her. And that’s fundamentally true. But maybe there’s a reason she’s bringing this to Caduceus rather than anybody else. He shifts, moving to place a big hand on her back. “I want everyone to keep doing good things too, you know. And… being together, we make each other better. And I wanna keep doing that.”

Jester sniffles, and there’s another silence, but this one feels less… fraught. And then she nods. “Yeah. We do, don’t we?”

Caduceus smiles wide and slow. “Nott told me that.”

“Nott? Really?”

“Yeah.” Caduceus is still smiling at that, remembering that early conversation that set the tone for a lot of things that would happen later, and helped him figure out his place in the group. “And now something that we like about each other. You go first.” He wants to tell Jester something very good — call it a Winter’s Crest gift, maybe — and so he doesn’t want to rush.

“Me? Fine,” Jester says and gives an exaggerated sigh. It only takes her a few seconds to think of something, because she’s so much better at talking about other people than she is at talking about herself. “I love your hair. Sometimes I wish I had pretty pink hair like yours, but I kind of like mine too. And I like that you’re so good at healing people. You’re way better than me. And…” she gets a little quieter here, a little more serious. “You’re a really good listener. I like telling you things, because I know that you really want to listen to me. And I think everybody likes that about you.”

She nudges her head a bit against his shoulder. Caduceus figures it’s a gesture of affection and smiles. “Thank you,” he says. “Now it’s my turn.”

Jester nods and sits up for that, looking almost nervous as she waits to hear what Caduceus is going to say. Wow. Caduceus hopes he doesn’t mess this up.

“You’re always learning about the world and keeping an open heart, and I think that’s really great. I’m trying to be like that too, but it’s not always easy. And you can always make people smile. I have a hard time with that.” He gives a rueful grin, and Jester matches him with a tremulous smile. “But you don’t have to make people smile all the time. And you don’t have to have an open heart all the time. It would be nice if you could — it would be nice if _I_ could — but that’s just not how the world is, you know? And I like it when you take time for yourself, too.”

Jester nods again but more slowly this time, like she’s trying to find a way to argue with Caduceus’s words. And that’s only to be expected from someone as stubborn as Jester. Life is change, and change takes time. Maybe if Caduceus tells Jester again and again that she’s loved no matter what, she’ll start believing him. And maybe that will change Caduceus too. He doesn’t know. And that’s part of the wonder and the mystery of life.

Jester smiles finally, after she’s done digesting Caduceus’s words. “Okay,” she says. “Thank you.” And she leans her head back down on Caduceus’s shoulder, letting out a breath. “I feel a lot better now. Thank you, Cad.”

Caduceus smiles. “Happy Winter’s Crest.”

“Happy… Happy Winter Solstice?” Jester attempts, and that’s good enough. She wraps her arms around Caduceus’s arm and settles with a smile. “Happy Winter’s Crest.”

Together, they watch the sun rise over the plains after the longest night of the year.

**Author's Note:**

> Title & beginning quote from "Don't Carry It All" by the Decemberists. Merry Critmas!


End file.
